"Now that I've reached the secret Diamond Princess level, my points accrue in triplicate. I can just sit and press 'j' all day long without actually reading anything, use my points to pay for food & clothing, and keep doing just that... forever."
I wonder if they saw my talk? :)
Have you given any serious thought to the inevitable subcultures that will spring up to take advantage (by which I mean exploit via hack or crack) of these phenomena? For instance, the auto-player subculture of FB games (Castle Age in particular) is actually more innovative, technically proficient, and responsive to their users than the game development crew.
ReplyDeleteThere's fertile ground for contemplation here.
Take a gander at what's going on in the CAAP community, and you'll see what I mean.
Cheatability is a huge issue with all of these things. The less cheatable, the more worth they have.
ReplyDeleteThere may be another way to approach the problem. What if we look at cheating as a meta-game?
ReplyDeleteThe cheaters are simply choosing to play the game in a different way, or rather they are working within the framework of the game-as-system and playing a different game entirely. It's not player vs. content for them, it's player vs. developer. The content and the in-game "win" become secondary considerations.
How can developers take this into consideration and use it to further the meta-goals of the games they design?
If we assume that every complex game can be broken, how can we mitigate the effects on the system, and more importantly, how can we take advantage of that assumption?